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* That all the negroes slept upon deck, as is customary in this navigation, and none wore fetters, because the owner, his friend Aranda, told him that they were all tractable; * that on the seventh day after leaving port, at three o'clock in the morning, all the Spaniards being asleep except the two officers on the watch, who were the boatswain, Juan Robles, and the carpenter, Juan Bautista Gayete, and the helmsman and his boy, the negroes revolted suddenly, wounded dangerously the boatswain and the carpenter, and successively killed eighteen men of those who were sleeping upon deck, some with hand-spikes and hatchets, and others by throwing them alive overboard, after tying them; that of the Spaniards upon deck, they left about seven, as he thinks, alive and tied, to manoeuvre the ship, and three or four more, who hid themselves, remained also alive.
But this decent and praiseworthy practice was not adopted at the time of which I am treating, or at least, Mr. Blattergowl did not act upon it, and the ceremony proceeded without any devotional exercise. The coffin, covered with a pall, and supported upon hand-spikes by the nearest relatives, now only waited the father to support the head, as is customary.
When on the margin of the sea, by the aid of hand-spikes, the head was got afloat, or so nearly so, as to require but little force to move it, when a line from the boats was fastened to the outer end, and the top was secured alongside. "Now, clap your hand-spikes under it, boys, and heave away!" cried the captain. "Heave together and keep the stick straight heave, and his head is afloat!
The whole lot of them retreated back to the forecastle, leaving five of their number dead about the decks, besides half a dozen or so of the others badly wounded; all of us, fortunately, escaping with only a few slight bruises from blows from the Haytian's clubs and hand-spikes the only weapons they used.
But this decent and praiseworthy practice was not adopted at the time of which I am treating, or at least, Mr. Blattergowl did not act upon it, and the ceremony proceeded without any devotional exercise. The coffin, covered with a pall, and supported upon hand-spikes by the nearest relatives, now only waited the father to support the head, as is customary.
Well, let them come we will have no ceremony in resisting them; they are not in the Act of Parliament, and must take the consequences. We have nought to fear. Get stretchers, my lads, and hand-spikes; they row six oars, and are three in the stern-sheets: they must be good men if they take us." In a few minutes Lord B was close to the smuggler. "Boat ahoy! What do you want?"
Strong, good hunters and axe-men, to the manner born and prone to look on any outsider as a tenderfoot. Their mode of building campfires was a constant vexation to me. They made it a point to always have a heavy sharp axe in camp, and toward night some sturdy chopper would cut eight or ten logs as heavy as the whole party could lug to camp with hand-spikes.
The rush of expectant men out of the forecastle, the snatching of hand-spikes, the tramp of feet, the clink of the pawls, make a stirring accompaniment to a plaintive up-anchor song with a roaring chorus; and this burst of noisy activity from a whole ship's crew seems like a voiceful awakening of the ship herself, till then, in the picturesque phrase of Dutch seamen, "lying asleep upon her iron."
The wreck was full of Arabs, some of whom were armed and some not; while mauls, crows hand-spikes, purchases, coils of rigging, and marling-spikes were scattered about on the sands, just where they had been dropped by the seamen.
MacMahon's leading brigade crossed the short intervening space without a shot being fired. The enemy's working parties and gunners who were repairing damages fought bravely with picks, shovels, and hand-spikes, but were eventually driven back.
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